#honorallmoms

I've been thinking a lot about Mother's Day this year.  I've been a little anxious about it - feeling somewhat undeserving of such an honor. But you know what? Who cares!  I'm celebrating because I was made to be a mom.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a mom. As a girl, I had this Raggedy Ann that went with me everywhere on the little 15-acre spot where I grew up. I bathed this poor homemade cloth doll in the creek, and tucked her in a little homemade doll bed at night. I used to put her on the swing and push her back and forth, and I read little story books to her, too.

When I was older, I was a camp counselor during the summers. I quickly realized that this was training for what I really wanted to be someday. Later, as a middle school teacher, I felt I was preparing myself for motherhood. In fact, I purposefully quit my job as a newspaper reporter and went back to school to get a graduate degree in education just so I would have a career that was more suited for children.

I was made to be a mom.

However, I did not become a mother as quickly as I had hoped. You see, God had plans different from mine.  When I met my now-husband, we both talked about how we wanted children. We also talked about how adoption was something we had always assumed would be a part of our lives. With a few years of unsuccessful trying, we had some decisions in front of us. We visited doctors, went through tests, and talked about the finances of fertility treatments. But none of it seemed right.  We prayed throughout a year for direction and finally decided in October of 2014 to adopt a child from foster care.  I prayed EVERY SINGLE DAY for that baby. I assumed s/he had been born and I was just waiting to meet him or her.

Exactly nine months later from the time we started praying, a baby girl was born in the summer of 2015. A week later, she came to live with us.  God made me to be a mom.  God prepared my heart to be her mom....for now.

And, I love it. I love being a mom - even though I'm a foster mom, and not a legal mom, or a mom from naturally bearing a child.

We're a week away from Mother's Day.  It's a grand holiday, but a hard one for so many people.  I've been there, and in some ways, I'm still there. My friend Sarah wrote a fantastic article about how we can honor all moms. Go read her her blog. http://allamericanmom.net/honorallmoms/

So many women were made to be moms - and are great moms even though their children don't share their genes.  I often think about the Bible verse found in Galations 4. Verse 27 tells barren women to rejoice because "more are the children of the desolate women..."

My bunkies at camp, my students when I was a school teacher, my pupils in Sunday School, the young women I've mentored all prepared me to be a mom. And now I'm a mom to a little 17-pound fire cracker. Honor all the moms in your life this week, friends.